The very first issue of The Objectivist Newsletter praised a book by Ludwig von Mises:
"A central point of Planned Chaos is Professor Mises' eloquent refutation of one of the most disastrous myths of the twentieth century: the belief that capitalism and socialism are not the only alternative economic systems, that there is a "third way." This alleged "third way" is interventionism, the hampered market economy, in which the state "seeks to influence the market by the intervention of its coercive power, but it does not want to eliminate the market altogether....The issue," he writes, "is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
In a later issue of the same newsletter, Nathaniel Branden wrote of another Mises book:
In Human Action, Professor Mises offers a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the nature of production and trade. He shows why a free economy is necessarily the most productive and efficient; why coercive interference with men's free choices in the market invariably leads to a lowering of the standard of living; why slavery is incompatible with an industrial civilization.Among the many issues he discusses are: economic calculation in a market economy; the determinants of prices, wages and production policies; the gold standard; interest rates and credit expansion; the causes of depression; the impossibility of rational economic calculation in a socialist system (this demonstration is one of his most important achievements); the contradictions and destructiveness of interventionism; common misconceptions concerning the history and nature of capitalism; the economics of war; confiscatory taxation.
One of the great merits of the book is its encyclopedic character; it deals with virtually every major problem in economic theory. It contains many historical illustrations and references that provide further illumination -- such as, for instance, a discussion of the "welfare state" policies of the disintegrating Roman Empire, and the manner in which these policies made the Empire vulnerable to the barbarian invaders (an analogy that is far from academic in our present political context).
Branden concludes: "As a reference work, it belongs in the library of every advocate of capitalism."
One of my favorite stories about Mises comes from Gary North:
Mises refused to offer a moral defense of the free market. He was a utilitarian epistemologically. Harper had told me of a discussion he had with Mises. He asked Mises, "If socialism were more efficient than capitalism, would you favor it?" Mises answered, "But it isn't." After several attempts, Harper dropped it. He said he was not going to get anywhere along these lines.
I never met him, and I've never met anyone who met him, but I he's one of my heroes, and I owe him for the two books above, plus Bureaucracy and The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. Few thinkers have challenged me as much to consider the implications of what I thought I already knew.
On this day in 1973, Ludwig von Mises breathed his last.
Posted by Craig Ceely at October 10, 2004 12:18 AM